Jordan Dubai Islamic Bank (JDIB), a full-fledged Islamic bank based in Jordan, has selected SunGard's Ambit for credit assessment and credit portfolio monitoring to help lay the foundation for risk-based decision-making and pricing, and for improved capital and credit risk management.

The bank will use Ambit to help improve the efficiency of its credit process, enhance its relationship management capabilities, gain better visibility into its financing portfolio and comply with requirements laid out by the Basel II/III regulations.

Ambit Credit Assessment will help JDIB standardize its spreading and credit assessment processes and deploy uniform risk rating models, particularly for its corporate and small and medium enterprise (SME) clients. The SunGard solution will also help the bank enhance face-to-face client interactions via 'strategy screens', helping to nurture client relationships in line with the core Islamic finance principle of 'partnership', and thereby helping reduce relationship risk.

Ambit Credit Portfolio Monitoring will help the bank perform portfolio trend analysis, concentration analysis, portfolio stress testing and portfolio reporting in order to analyze and monitor credit risk across various portfolios and sub-portfolios.

Ahmed A. Abdullah, deputy chief executive officer and chief risk officer for Jordan Dubai Islamic Bank, said, "As a relatively young bank, JDIB has the opportunity to establish a comprehensive risk management system that will help us meet our profitability objectives while maintaining prudent financing standards and appropriate capital adequacy. SunGard's Ambit credit risk management solution suite will help us make better informed decisions about credit worthiness at the initial stages of client evaluation, estimate the impact of both internal and external factors on the risk around our portfolio, and subsequently determine the risk associated with our financing portfolio to our short and long term profitability."

Wissam Khoury, managing director for the Middle East at SunGard Financial Systems, said, "SunGard's Ambit credit risk management solution suite helps banks increase the strength of their risk-adjusted performance. From assessing the creditworthiness of clients and enhancing the bank's relationship management capabilities, to helping improve transparency into the financing portfolio, Ambit helps banks, such as Jordan Dubai Islamic Bank, better understand their risk and consequently make more informed financing decisions."